Shining Sea
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
An arresting and absorbing novel that spans decades, drawing us into the turbulent lives of a family in Southern California after the sudden death of the father.
Beginning in 1962 with a shocking loss, Shining Sea quickly pulls us into the lives of forty-three -year-old Michael Gannon's widow and offspring. Brilliantly described and utterly alive on the page, the Gannon clan find themselves charting paths they never anticipated, for decades to come. Told with a cinematic sweep, Shining Sea transports us from World War II to the present day, crisscrossing from the beaches of Southern California to the Woodstock rock festival, from London's gritty nightlife in the eighties to Scotland's remote Inner Hebrides, from the dry heat of Arizona to the fertile farmland of Massachusetts.
Epic, tender, and beautifully rendered, Shining Sea is the portrait of an American family-a profound depiction of the ripple effects of war, the passing down of memory, the making of myth, and the power of the ideal of heroism to lead us astray but sometimes also to keep us afloat.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This absorbing generational story, which follows the Gannon family from WWII to the present, explores complex dynamics and captures the mood of different decades in America. Korkeakivi's cogent insight into family relationships and the impact of personal loss, as well as how the times we live in effect who we are, shines through. The book opens with an affecting scene in which the patriarch, Michael Gannon, 43 years old and a survivor of the Bataan Death March, realizes that he's having a heart attack. The viewpoint shifts to his beleaguered widow, Barbara, left caring for their four children with a fifth on the way, and then to the troubled Francis, the youngest son, who can never escape the shadows of his heroic father's life and death and, later, his best friend's suicide. Each character's story is rich and excellently crafted: Barbara's practical second marriage five years after her husband's untimely death, plagued with a problem she refuses to recognize; eldest daughter Patty Ann's struggle with a string of loser husbands and the heartbreaking choices she makes to survive; Francis's wanderlust as he lives day-to-day to escape his past, following whims across continents that eventually place him in life-threatening circumstances. In the end, Korkeakivi (An Unexpected Guest) seamlessly brings her themes full circle heroism, the importance of family, and giving back to the world all of which would have made Michael Gannon very proud.
